Students tour Sonora Quest Lab to catch glimpse of health sciences

A group of eight middle and high school students gathered at one of Tucson’s Sonora Quest Laboratories on a Tuesday afternoon to take a tour and learn more about the different kinds of STEM-related careers they can pursue.

The visit, organized in partnership with the Southern Arizona Research, Science and Engineering Foundation (SARSEF), was part of an effort to fill labor shortages in laboratories while providing students with real-world experiences.

Eric Pickney, a senior director of enterprise risk management at Sonora Quest and a SARSEF board member, said he came up with the idea after seeing similar gaps between both entities.

“When I came to work on the board, I realized that they did not have quite as much of the health sciences or health-care sciences,” Pickney said. “As with many industries right now, there’s a shortage of staff in all levels of laboratory — anything from phlebotomists to medical lab scientists.”

He said he began organizing the tour efforts to give students a glimpse into health sciences lab work, with the hope they would become inspired to pursue such careers.

Tuesday’s tour consisted of students from Basis Oro Valley, Cross and Orange Grove middle schools, and Tucson High Magnet and University High. It was led by Ron Pearson, director of operations for Sonora Quest in Tucson.

He took the group through the maze of different labs on the first two floors, teaching the students about areas including phlebotomy, histology and microbiology, among others. A worker in each department then provided more specifics about their day-to-day activities and the importance of that work on a larger scale.

The participants were offered the opportunity based on their past science and research projects for the SARSEF Regional Fair, said Julie Euber, chief executive officer of SARSEF.

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“We found students that specifically had projects that had to do, for example, with something related to blood or disease or something that we felt would make this tour extra special for them,” Euber said.

Sophie Roth Gordon, an eighth-grader at Orange Grove Middle School, was one of the eight invitees. She noted that one of her previous projects with SARSEF dealt with analyzing how exercise and certain types of food can affect a person’s blood sugar.

After walking through the several departments of the Sonora Quest lab, Roth Gordon said she felt inspired by the active environments.

“I really liked how hands-on it was and how you can involve yourself into knowing more about what’s going on,” she said. “If there was a new thing that happened, like COVID and the delta (variant), something new that we didn’t understand, it’s fun to know that you can figure it out.”

Liam Superville, a senior student at Tucson High Magnet School, said the tour confirmed that he wants to stick with a STEM career as he heads off to college later this year. He hopes to pursue an education in biochemistry or biomedical engineering.

“I thought the tour was really interesting. I loved seeing every department, like the histology was one that I thought was really interesting and I’ve never really heard of that before,” he said, in reference to the department in which workers analyze tissue samples.

“It’s one of my favorite things to do, work in laboratory settings like this,” he added. “So I can definitely see myself working in a lab environment and I really think I can thrive in that.”